Sunday, August 11, 2013

Why public education is overrated

While skimming the book Deconstructing Reagan, I ran across this peculiar paragraph discussing Pres. Reagan's Strategic Defense Initiative:

The president latched on to the concept of a space shield and made it one of his most intense personal causes. Nuclear war, he told friends, might be Armageddon, the biblically prophesied battle before Christ’s return. Perhaps SDI could prevent it. Just how a technological fix would prevent a rain of ruin ordained by God was unclear. But SDI promised a range of material as well as spiritual rewards.

The author, historian Michael Schaller, apparently misunderstood a simple analogy by taking it literally, and then compounds his error by pursuing it to absurdity.

Schaller, however, is not just a random nitwit. He is a Regent's Professor (the highest faculty rank) at the University of Arizona who has authored or contributed many books on Reagan and his times. Yet, he behaves as if hatred-of-Reagan is a substitute for intelligent thought.

America spends a fortune on its public universities but, as Schaller illustrates, we are clearly not getting our money's worth.